Thursday, 29 December 2011

We wrote to object in the strongest possible terms to East Riding Council regarding proposals for oil prospecting on the Yorkshire Wolds. The Green Party, alongwith Friends of the Earth (FOE) and other well-respected organisations, campaign, on the basis of careful research, for development and use of renewable energy and fuel conservation instead of the further exploitation of fossil fuels. We have had a century’s addiction to oil - and we must now wean ourselves off this addiction, as oil becomes harder and harder to find and to extract. There are excellent alternatives which must be embraced instead of resisted.

Tuesday, 6 December 2011

I am joining Friends of the Earth Uganda (NAPE) in their campaign to protect Uganda's unique heritage.

We lived in Uganda for a few years (2001-4) and saw how beautiful it is - although we were aware of how much of it had already been deforested. Please don't be tricked into ruining your wonderful country for another short term commercial modernist 'solution'.

We visited the Ssesse Islands and know that they are a fantastic tourism resource - but not if they are turned into monoculture plantations (the products of which are boycotted by growing numbers of people). Please support permaculture instead. (more)

Saturday, 3 December 2011

You rightly identify the failure of successive governments to tackle the national shame of ever more households struggling to heat their homes (Quarter of home now in fuel poverty - 02 December). This looks set to continue as fuel prices go up and government support for energy efficiency measures for the most vulnerable goes down.

Next year will be the first time in three decades that there has been no Treasury funded scheme for those in fuel poverty. Instead, the government is introducing a new energy company obligation (ECO) as part of its flagship Green Deal programme.

Earlier this year, Ministers assured me that this new Obligation would provide a "far greater level of resource" to tackle fuel poverty when it replaces the existing schemes, the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target (CERT) and Warm Front. But just this week, those same Ministers were unable to answer my direct question on how the ECO's pitiful £325m a year for fuel poor homes is "far greater" the 2010-11 Warm Front spending of £370m, or CERT's spending of around £600m a year on vulnerable households.

This is not just a question of pounds and pence. Last winter, according the Office of National Statistics, there were over 25,000 premature deaths in this country because people could not keep warm in their homes. Government inaction to control the oligopoly of the big, profit hungry energy companies, or to help households to cut their bills, means that yet more lives could be lost unnecessarily this winter.

The Government is currently consulting on the Green Deal and its ECO proposals. I would urge anyone concerned about the fuel poor to respond to this consultation, to ensure that all homes are properly insulated and the scourge of fuel poverty is eradicated once and for all.

Yours sincerely,

Caroline Lucas, MP for Brighton Pavilion and Co-Chair of the Fuel Poverty and Energy Efficiency All Party Parliamentary Group

Up to two million trade union members went on strike on Wednesday, inprotest against the government's attack on pensions and cuts in publicservices. Their grievances are real. But their solutions don't go farenough. Pressing the government for fairness isn't the answer. Staging aprotest is second best. These are reactive, defensive responses tofundamental flaws and failings in the way our economy is organised and run.

The perennial failing of most trade unions is that their horizons are solimited. They seek a better deal for their members within the economicstatus quo, when the real solution is to reform the system of economy that,by its very nature, leaves the vast majority of working people powerless,disenfranchised and marginalised. When it comes to the economy, the averageperson has no meaningful say in the decisions that affect their jobs,wages, pensions and working conditions.

We expect political democracy. Why not economic democracy too?

Behind the cosy democratic facade, Britain is a cut-throat economicdictatorship. A rich and powerful economic elite makes all the key economicdecisions, excluding millions of employees and consumers.

Our country's democratic political transformation - pushed forward by theLevellers, Chartists and Suffragettes - has never been matched by acorresponding economic democratisation.

'One person, one vote' has been won in the political sphere (albeitimperfectly) but not in the realm of economics. Britain's democraticrevolution, begun four centuries ago, remains unfinished.

It is time to put economic democracy on the political agenda; to bring theeconomy into democratic alignment with the political system.

Extending the economic franchise is about democracy and justice. It canhelp create a greater plurality and diversity of economic power, and alsolay the foundations for a more equitable and productive economicpartnership between all those who contribute to wealth creation and to theprovision of public services, from local councils to the NHS.

Whatever people think of the current economic system, one thing isindisputable: it is characterised by an absence of democracy,participation, transparency and accountability. Employees and theirrepresentative bodies - the trade unions - are frozen out of economicinfluence and decision-making.

Big business rules. The captains of industry, commerce and finance havealmost total power. They run their enterprises on totalitarian lines. Alldecision-making is concentrated in the hands of a tiny, privileged cabal ofmajor shareholders, directors and managers. They alone determine how thecompany operates. Employees - without whom no wealth would be created andno institution could function - are powerless and disenfranchised. They arelittle more than glorified serfs of the moneyed classes and theirgovernment.

Not much has changed in two centuries of capitalism. There have been nomajor democratic reforms of the economy. Although millions of people boughtshares in privatised public enterprises like BT, their individual holdingsare minuscule and marginal. They have no real influence. Big corporateinterests retain the decisive economic power. This power is as centralisedand autocratic as ever. A few determine the fate of the many.

The advent of nationalised public industries, utilities and serviceschanged nothing. They have been run in much the same centralised,dictatorial manner as their privately-owned counterparts. There was neverany economic democracy in the state-run railways or coal mines. The systemof ownership changed but not the system of management. The bosses of publicutilities and nationalised industries were almost as powerful as thecaptains of private enterprise. Their employees remained locked out of thedecision-making process. It was state capitalism, not socialism. The LabourParty and the trade unions have made a huge mistake in over-emphasisingpublic ownership, to the neglect of public control.

The same applies today in the NHS and other public services. They areadministered according to the classic capitalist model of top-down commandand control. NHS big-wigs have almost as much power as private medicalbosses. Doctors, nurses and ancillary staff are excluded from policy-makingin both public and private medicine.

Their years of accumulated hands-on, frontline service knowledge isdisregarded when it comes to policy-making. This is a huge waste of humanresources.

Wherever we look, in all sectors of the economy, the democratic deficit isuniversal. Power is concentrated and wielded in ways that is contrary tothe democratic, egalitarian spirit of modern, twenty-first century Britain.The time for economic democracy is now.